The whole thing started on a cold Winter night alot like tonight – actually, maybe it goes back even farther than that…
My parents were born and raised in New Castle County, Delaware. My father graduated from Newark High School in 1967, my mother from nearby William Penn High School in 1968 – which is the same year that my father went into the Navy for 4 years – 2 of which he spent in the Tonkin Gulf aboard the USS Tripoli – a helicopter carrier…
That’s important, because while he was at sea in about 1969/1970, he was contemplating the duty-free purchase of an E-Type roadster. He claims he had the papers all filled out – it was going to be British Racing Green. But instead of putting down the deposit on it, he bought my mother a diamond ring in Hong Kong instead. Which of course, was good news for me – I was born in the Balboa Naval hospital in 1971.
Fast forward 15 years to sometime in the Winter of 1985-86… I was 14 years old, and a freshman in a private high school – where I had a scholarship because I was a genius as a kid – although a very bad student – I blew the standardized tests out of the water, and never did my homework…
Anyway, we were a pretty all-american family, and I guess aside from being a little chubby dude with glasses and kind of nerdy, I was an all-american kid. I was heavily involved in Boy Scouts, hunted deer and small game with my dad, etc. I had minibikes and go-carts that we cobbled together out of dead lawnmower engines – and I seemed to be pretty good fixing mechanical things – or at least at taking them apart! No sports – I wasn’t very “fit” at the time – or coordinated. I had gone through a steady stream of girlfriends in 7th and 8th grade, but the move to private school had somehow stopped that dead in its tracks…
My parents were your basic middle class parents too – my father worked at the DuPont experimental station as a lab technician, and my mother was a secretary – when they still existed. My father was always building things, though – renovating our house, fixing his own cars, restoring wooden boats, building me go-carts and such, and was always looking for ways to get ahead. One of those was building decks and furniture for people on the side – he was and still is a fabulous woodworker.
So it was a night just like this that Winter, when I found myself being dragged along to a customers house after dinner to help him carry in some bookcases he had made for a woman who lived about 10-15 miles away. As we were riding home, a “meaningless” conversation popped up that might have just been him searching for something to talk about with me – who knows… As it turned out though, an off-the-cuff remark he made ended up pretty much mapping out the rest of my life…
“You know” he started, “you’re going to be 16 and driving soon – have you given any thought to what kind of car you’d like to have?”
It took me about 10 milliseconds to answer – “I want a Jeep.” Now, you have to realize that at this time, I was HEAVY into Boy Scouts – and working my way toward Eagle Scout pretty steadily. I went camping once a month, had just gotten back from the national jamboree that Summer, was really into hunting, and I just wanted to be out in the woods ALL THE TIME! And so a Jeep CJ just seemed natural to me – and I had started wanting one about a year ago I guess, although I felt like I was a lifetime away from driving at the time, and hadn’t REALLY given it much thought… My father had a Jeep when I was younger, and we would often drive it out on the beach to surf fish.
“Jeeps are a pain in the ass… They’re hot in the Summer, cold in the Winter, they don’t even really have real doors – man, you don’t want a Jeep, you just think you do…”
My initial thoughts here were, “You’re an idiot – Jeeps are awesome.” – but my response was silence… Then he continued…
“When I was your age, the car to have was a Jaguar XKE. That’s what I’d be looking for if I were you – something like a Jag with a small-block Chevy in it with Corvette valve covers…”
Now, I wasn’t into cars AT ALL – so I didn’t have the SLIGHTEST CLUE what a “Jaguar XKE” was – I had never heard that phrase in my life… I didn’t know what a “small block Chevy” was, and I sure as hell didn’t know what “valve covers” were…
All I knew at the time was that driving was a LIFETIME away, and when it did finally happen, I was getting a Jeep…
